


Therapy session

by AgapantoBlu



Series: Bee Is A Safe Place [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Homophobia, M/M, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, therapy sessions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-30 01:46:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10866453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: High on his meds, Andrew didn’t hate Betsy Dobson, nor he liked her. She fleeted in his mind like a burst of yellow that sometimes caught his attention for no reason at all, like the sudden reflection of sunlight on a shiny little thing, following whatever association his drugged up brain made. But she was also fast forgotten, a useless shard of glass on the beach.(Andrew and Bee and their sessions with time.)





	Therapy session

 

To Andrew, Bee is different.

Not different from; just different, as an absolute concept. He’s had his fair share of psychologists and psychiatrists to deal with, but none like her. As a first thing, they never gave him chocolate.

 

 

The first time he went to session with Dr. Dobson, Andrew was ready to fight, in a cold and restless way he read in the strategy books he snuck out of library when he was nine.

 _Attrition warfare._  Wear your enemy down until they have no strength to be a threat anymore. Andrew preferred knives and good, fair stabs in the face, but this could do when he didn’t have another choice. If nothing, it was interesting for a while, usually.

Bee offered him hot chocolate and he arched a brow at her. He took it just because he knew it would piss Kevin off and because the Exy-obsessed idiot cleared out their room from any junk food.  _Fool_ ; Nicky was on his way to refill every possible cabinet as Andrew was stuck here.

He sipped and watched Dobson asking a few questions, and then resorting to silence when the only answer she got was a shake of his head at the mention of recording the sessions. An hour was a long time to spend in silence, especially with Andrew’s maniac smile fixed on, he knew that, but the shrink barely fidgeted under his eyes. She smiled back, sometimes, but aside from that she let him be.

 

 

Andrew knew he couldn’t get out of his weekly appointment with Bee. If the choice were up to Wymack, maybe he could have worked his way out; but with the order of the Juvenile Court there was no way to get out of an hour sitting in front of Dobson, not without going back to jail.

Jail was not a problem —  _he doesn’t care, doesn’t care, doesn’t fucking care_  —; breaking his promise to Kevin and Aaron, yes, it was.

So Andrew went back every Wednesday, sat in front of the meek woman, drank chocolate and smiled maniacally at her. Rinse and repeat, every week. Sometimes she would scribble something, even if he hadn’t been doing anything for the whole time, and it pissed him off.

On his third week, he went to his appointment almost sober. He calculated his time carefully, made sure he’d last through the hour before the withdrawal hit him like a bitch, and this time around he stared.

Dobson smiled at him. “It’s nice to meet you at last, Andrew.”

He arched a brow and his nail scraped the print on his mug, the orange paw of a fox. Unsurprising.

“We’ll see about it.”

She poured him more chocolate and didn’t answer. It would have been annoying, had Andrew cared enough to feel -  _been able to, been able to, been able to, you can’t_  -.

Andrew’s sobriety was a two faced weapon. Whether it was a clear breach on his conditions, it left him far more dangerous than he was in his maniac state. He had killed once, already, and his brain had been good enough that he never got charged; that people still thought it was just an accident.

People also used to think Aaron’s bruises came from Exy.

People were stupid. Andrew didn’t trust any of them.

He also didn’t expect such a lukewarm reaction for Dobson. She went back to scribbling something almost as soon as he was done talking, then she poured more chocolate into her own mug and went back to her notes.

If she were waiting for something, she’d grow old there.

Andrew let his head fall a bit against the back of the couch. He didn’t close his eyes but he let the silence in his brain relax his shoulders.

The drugs made his mind buzz, like a constant background noise was being pumped into his head without cease; and the court and the dorms were just as chaotic with Kevin’s nagging and Nicky’s loudness and Aaron’s silent presence that seemed to scream louder than the other two put together. Quietness, Andrew found it rarely.

Dobson’s office was quiet. Its windows opened on the backyard gardens where nobody ever went, if not to study or sleep a couple hours of break away. Her clock was digital, no ticking allowed, and she was silent herself. There were many little objects all around, disposed in a way that wasn’t as careful as it was obsessive. Andrew had taken note of it the first day in, and stored in a corner of his bottomless mind.

He never closed his eyes, because he was no idiot, but he let as much tension as he could sweep out of him and basked in the silence.

 

 

Whatever Bee had though of Andrew’s sobriety, on their next meeting she asked.

Nothing much. If there was anything he wanted to talk about, mainly, in different forms, but she never asked for a certain topic. It was all that skirting around the ton-shit of issues she could have gone for that made Andrew frown, annoyed.

“Maybe I would answer if you asked something,” he said, because the drugs were frying his brain and he couldn’t keep silent. Then he considered what he said. “Or not. I don’t care. This is all annoying.”

His interest fell on the way the light reflected on a tiny glass figure, shaped like a sleeping little fox in pastel gentle colors. There was a minuscule prisma on the tip of the tail and it disemboweled light in a tiny rainbow that fell on Dobson’s arm. 

 _Disembowel_. His brain really was fucked up. He hummed to himself at the irony. 

Dobson scribbled something, and he seethed. She lifted her head again, saw something, who knew what, and laid his pen down. Her face was just as gentle as always, but her voice a bit more pushing, just a few steps in the direction of demanding.

“This time is for you, Andrew,” she stated, as if she really believed that. “If you want to glare at me, be my guest. If you want to sit and enjoy the quiet, then do it; I can imagine cohabitation may be hard sometimes. If you need to come here half sober, I’m not going to stop you, though I’d highly discourage it. I don’t think it’d be worth the troubles if you were to get caught, but it’s your choice for as long as you’re in here.”

Andrew’s interested got piquet, with the first sentence; his instincts flamed up with the second -  _she noticed, she noticed, she knew_  -; with the third, he tilted his head to a side, intrigued in spite of himself.

“Aren’t you supposed to tell me not to, like a good mommy?” The last word scathed his tongue. 

_Cass._

_Shut the fuck up, Andrew._

“You don’t make hazarded choices, Andrew; I’m sure you know the risks of coming off your medicals.” She was serious, completely so. “This time and this place are supposed to be for your own benefit and mental health; that’s the basis of therapy. I do not earn anything by reporting you; and I couldn’t anyway. Professional secrecy exists for a reason." _  
_

Unimpressed, he leaned back against the couch, squandering her from top down. With his drugs, she was like a mule puling on a rock thrice her size; with sobriety, she looked even more stubborn.

“What if I killed someone?” On one thing she was right, though. He didn’t take hazarded decisions. He considered and valued every bit of truth he was going to say, or he kept quiet at all. He never lied, so he was picky with those he gave his truths to. To her credit, she didn’t even flinch. “Would your secrecy hold up?”

“My secrecy is a part of my figure,” Dobson said, sipping on her drink like she weren’t talking murder with a juvenile criminal in front of her. When she lowered the cup, she stared at him dead in the eyes. Dead,  _ah!_  “Your pills are not a part of yours. Just be careful with them, alright? Withdrawal is hard to go through and it’s not healthy to subject your body to it too often.” Something at the corners of her eyes softened. “It deserves some rest. You, do."

“I hate my meds.” That was the first truth he deliberately offered, and for nothing more than payback for Dobson’s answer. A truth for a truth. Her eyes glinted, like she knew the secret deal Andrew had just silently made with himself.

She tapped the pen against her notebook, but wrote nothing. “Is it your meds, that you hate, or the lack of control that comes with them?”

Andrew fucking hated Betsy Dobson.

 

 

High on his meds, Andrew didn’t hate Betsy Dobson, nor he liked her. She fleeted in his mind like a burst of yellow that sometimes caught his attention for no reason at all, like the sudden reflection of sunlight on a shiny little thing, following whatever association his drugged up brain made. But she was also fast forgotten, a useless shard of glass on the beach.

Since their last appointment, the reflection that caught his eye the most was the tiny admission about secrecy. He was roughly aware of the limitations of shrinks, if nothing else from what he learnt in Criminology classes and his personal experience, but it was the first time someone addressed the matter in such defined terms. A murder, Dobson had let him intend, she wouldn’t have reported. 

How funny, his brain thought, lost in its own mania of synthetic neural transmitters. And to think he spent months in Juvenile for breaking into a supermarket at night and stealing ice cream.

He ate it like it was the last time in his life. He kicked stuff around and broke things and screamed, to make sure they heard him and because he was so so tired of keeping his mouth shut, shut _, shut, shut up, AJ, you don’t want mom to see you like this, do you?, you don’t want to get sent away, shut up, shut up, see how good you are when you keep quiet?, don’t speak, shut up, just moan, you’re so good, AJ, shut up._

“Nicky is a fucking idiot.” He spoke, sitting on Dobson’s couch, just out of spite, just to cast the shadows away from his brain, because they’d never leave his memory. He hang onto the promise of secrecy because it was better than to let the past swipe him off his feet in front of her, of anyone.

Also, Nicky  _was_  an idiot.

Dobson didn’t seem to get mad or be surprised about the remark. Meek; a gentle follower of his thoughts. "Is he, now? How come?"

 _He got his chance at Heaven and shoved it up his own ass to come back here for me and Aaron._ "He’s an Exy player, and for the most troublesome team in Class I. He knows how to fucking hold himself in a brawl.” He frowned, annoyed because those words were also true. "He let those fuckers beat him."

Dobson bent her head to a side, thoughtful. "Why do you think he did that?"

Andrew blinked, waiting for a denial that never came. For the first time, she looked kind of worried, no trace of the serenity that had held her firm in the storm of Andrew’s rampage of silence. 

She was truly believing him. It was almost disconcerting. She wasn’t dismissing his words, but considering them cautiously.  _It’s just a misunderstanding, Andrew; you just don’t know what brotherly love is._

"For the same reason he lets Aaron talk shit about him every second of the day.” Andrew adjusted himself on the couch, acutely aware of the door at his back, and he crossed his arms. "The moment he hears someone bitching about homosexuality, he gets back to conversion camp and just lets people fuck him up all over again. He’s just that much of an idiot.”

Andrew had slept next door to Nicky for months, in Columbia, after his cousin had taken both him and Aaron in. He had heard him waking up at night muffling sobs in the pillow, calling Erik and bitterly blessing Time Zones in wet hushes as he let his lover talk him down from his panic. Nicky wore his smile the same way Andrew wore bruised knuckles and Renee’s knives.

Dobson fixed the glasses on her nose, calm. She tapped the pen against the open page in her lap, but she didn’t write anything. Andrew wondered how her notes looked. "And how does it make you feel, that Nicky acts like that?"

"Is this all you’re going to ask?” His head bent to a side against his will, and his voice came out amused and funny instead of threatening. He felt poison burning in his veins, but the drugs were crushing his nerves and making his body turn to dull ashes. “Not about the conversion camp or about Nicky’s issues?” His eyes widened a fraction, his smile dangerously wide. "Aren’t you going to tell me I’m wrong?”

_It’s just a misunderstanding, Andrew; you just don’t know what brotherly love is._

_Shut up. Shut up. Shut. Up. Shut. The. Fuck. Up._

Dobson torched the pen in her hands. She seemed unable to be completely still when she was thinking carefully to an answer, like a bee working restlessly around her flowers.

"I’m not going to talk to Nicky about these issues because I haven’t heard of them from him and bringing them up would be like breaching the privacy you are entitled to,” she said. "And I’m not going to tell you anything about what Nicky says to me during our appointments, either. I told you I'm bound by professional secrecy, Andrew; I won’t break it, whether for him or for you.”

_Hey, new kid, there’s a new kid, how long until he breaks, you say?, look at him, all short and acting though, bet he can’t throw a punch to save his life, he won’t last a week in here, he’s gonna break, he’s gonna break, break, break, br-_

"So what about this?”  _  
_

Andrew was always fast. Speed was a skill a kid needed to acquire when locked in a house with dolled up monsters pretending to be humans. He was at the side of Dobson’s desk in a second and he waited for her to turn to him, to see,  _see?_ , before his hand pushed the tiny fox figure off the surface.

It broke on the white floor in a thousand pale red shards; like drops of blood on fresh sheets. 

_AJ, get your beddings from the string, would you, sweetheart? They should have dried by now._

Dobson visibly, physically, flinched. Andrew’s mind buzzed with satisfaction — he was  _right_  —, but the smile on his face fell into a curious expression as he faced her demons, laid bare for him to gauge their dimensions.

"Are you going to tell anyone about this?” he taunted, not even thinking of stopping himself, and his foot moved on the shards as he took a step toward her. “Or does it fall under professional secrecy too?"

Dobson had paled. Her hands in her lap were tight around her pen and her legs were pressed close. "Why don’t you sit back down, Andrew? We can talk about how you feel in regards of Nicky’s predicament or we can change the topic, if you prefer.”

Her voice was not as firm as before. There was a trembling note at the end; he could pick it up even if she had tried to hide it.

His hand found something else on the desk, a pen holder maybe, and moved it aside, just a few inches, just enough to break the spell of perfection Bee had built and to watch her pull her lips into a thin line. "No, I find this to be much more interesting."

Dobson's reactions were interesting. She watched him, stiff as a board, as he messed up with her things, as he moved them around just enough that their order was disrupted. She didn't flinch anymore, but Andrew could see that her mind was struggling not to make her bolt out of the chair and put everything back to its rightful place. Obsessive. Compulsive.

It was a tiny sound that broke the spell.

The alarm of Dobson’s clock, going off to declare their appointment over, and Andrew blinked. Boredom came back fast, a loyal unwanted friend. 

"Looks like we’re out of time, doctor.” He watched her hand moving the clock to turn it off, her fingers firm but slow, almost sluggish. "Let’s continue next time, alright?”

He turned on his heels and left, without looking back or even trying to offer an explanation for his behavior.

_It’s just a misunderstanding, Andrew; you just don’t know what brotherly love is._

_I fucking hate that word._

 

 

Before next Wednesday came around, Wymack stopped him on his path to the court. Smart as always, coach didn’t touch him, but the arm he opened in front of him to block his path was the closest he had ever come to physically imposing himself to him, and that was enough to let Andrew know it was a serious matter.

Kevin looked at them like a deer caught in headlights and he gestured him to go on alone with a tilt of his head. Wymack barely waited for the striker to be out of hearing range before glaring at him.

"Listen here, mongrel. I don’t know what the fuck you did, but you mess with Betsy like that again and I will shred yours, Aaron’s, Nicky’s and Kevin’s contracts. I’m not dealing with you if you’re going to pull that kind of bullshit on the only person who could help you lot straighten up your messed up brains."

Andrew thought that Wymack cared, but knew little of mental illness. You couldn’t straighten up certain brains, some were just too warped up to manage. 

He also thought that little operose bee of a shrink would probably tell him that much.

"Did she break her professional secrecy already?” he said instead. "Too bad. I thought she’d last longer."

Wymack frowned at him. "She didn’t, you brat. She didn’t eat dessert last night at dinner and I know you’re the last one she had a session with.” A finger shoved in front of his face. Not touching. Never touching.  _Don’t touch me!_  "This is first and last warning, Andrew. Don’t mess with Betsy or you and your lot are out. You may not care a single fuck, but for some of the others here she made a difference.”

People only made a difference when they ruined your life, Andrew thought. 

_Cass could have made a difference._

_But she didn’t._

_Shut up, Andrew._

“Yes, Coach,” he said.

 

 

Dobson’s office was back in shape the next Wednesday. She sat in her armchair with her smile back in place, notebook in her lap, and her eyes shone gently as she took in the lazy strides of his legs, heavy,  _heavy, heavy_.

 _I just want to go back._  His blood was fuzzing in his veins, his brain sped up at a hundred miles per hour.  _Get me off this shit._

He sat down heavily, pushed himself back against the couch and stared. 

Once, he’d snatched the pen out of one of his therapists' hand and pointed it at his throat. He was moved to another study by the time his next appointment rolled around. He’d expected Betsy Dobson to be just like the others, to pull her hand back when he showed he was ready to chew it off, yet here she was, arm outstretch and fuming mug in a peaceful offering.

She had guts, Andrew decided. She didn’t even flinch when his fingers almost touched hers.

Dobson’s hot chocolate was terrifyingly sweet. The kind of sugary treat that would make Aaron puke and Kevin complain all the way to Friday night about health and stuff. Just like Andrew liked it. He wondered how she knew it.

“Andrew? May I tell you something?”

His eyes flew on her faster than his thoughts. His brow arched and he let it do it. There was no reason to waste time on trying to fight the drugs, just letting them drive him around like a crazy whirligig and earn himself a bit of sobriety when nobody could see it. He didn’t really have a choice, after all.

His drugs were interested in Dobson, and they made him nod.

Betsy laid her pen on her notebook, like waving a white flag, and she crossed her fingers on top of it. Her shoulders stood relaxed but open, her spine straight. She had her smile tucked somewhere behind her ear, together with soft brown strands, and on he lips stood instead a thin line, serious though still soft. “I feel there’s a discrepancy in our expectations of these sessions, and I’d like to clarify that, if you’d let me.” 

Andrew never let people; they always did and did and did and fuck what he wanted. She’d tell him anyway, even if he said no,  _would she?, she would, you don’t know, shut up, Andrew_ , so he’d let her, just for the kick of thinking it had been his choice all along. His nod was crooked as it came accompanied by a tilt of his head to a side as he noticed something behind her. 

The glass fox was back on the desk. It had been glued back together piece by piece, and one of the pointy ears was a bit askew.

“Andrew,” Betsy’s voice was always interesting to his drugs, even when his brain was deep into imagining to break the fox again just to fix it again, right. “You need to know, this time is for you.” It pissed him off, the way she said it. Like it was an absolute, like a worshipper looking at a shrine. "It’s not about me. You could say I’m a tool for you to sort some things out through. My own issues, my own thoughts, my own personal beliefs; they stay out of that door. This is a place where you can talk and know I’ll be listening without judging. It’s supposed to be a safe space."

"Are you asking for my trust in exchange of some hot chocolate and your silence?” Andrew let an amused smirk bend his lips. "Ain’t you cheap, Dr Dobson!"

Betsy didn’t look intimidated, but she bent her head to a side. "Oh no, I’m not asking you to trust me; I’m asking you to trust the principles of my profession and what they demand of me.” She smiled. "The hot chocolate is just an extra."

Andrew stared, unimpressed. "You’re my thirteenth shrink. My trust in the principles of your profession is none."

His answer came as a soft humming. "I can imagine. I worked with the social workers and then in juvenile for a few years, at the beginning. It wasn't really for me. I need to make sure I can provide my patients with the privacy they deserve and it’s almost impossible in both those settings. I prefer working here because I am free to create the safe space I want to offer you all."

"You’re obsessive."

"I have a mild OCD, yes.” Betsy admitted, nodding a bit but keeping her steady way through his thoughts, like a stubborn bull. Or a bee. A bee obstinately hitting her head against the closed glass of a window in a desperate attempt to reach the flowers outside.  _Stupid bee._  "It’s not that surprising. One of the first things they tell you when you enter my field of profession is that if you chose to be here you’re hardly a normal person.” 

She chuckled as if it was funny. Andrew didn’t think it was funny. His drugs maybe did, because he felt his lips open in a smirk. "Many of my colleagues, just like me, have somehow been in contact with the fallout of a brain’s backfiring; some personally, like me, and some through others. People rarely choose to jump into this profession without a very good reason."

It was Andrew’s turn to bend his head, but his eyes fell away again, on the fox, and it was like the talk they just had was just a useless string of fog from a dying cigarette in the mist of his drugged thoughts. 

"I broke your stuff,” he said, a mild amused something in his voice.

Betsy didn’t react past a simple nod. "I fixed it."

"I moved it."

"I fixed that too."

"You were freaking out."

"Did you notice? I apologize.” Her hair bounced every time she bent her head to a side, but this time a bit more as she also lowered her chin a bit, almost in shame. Maybe in shame. She was so weird. "I thought I was doing a better job at hiding it. I should know better by now.” She picked her pen again, signaling the end of the conversation before Andrew could push it some more. His drugs weren’t happy about it. "So, shall we start our session, now? Is there anything you’d like to talk about?"

"You’re a weird one.” He wasn’t sure whether it was his drugs or he himself to say that. Maybe both. Probably both.

Betsy chuckled. "I’m a psychiatrist. We’re all a bit weird. Does it bother you?”

Andrew scoffed. "Everybody in this team is weird at best and completely fucked up at worst.”

He thought about Nicky and his stupid loyalty, about Aaron and his stupid hostility and he thought about Kevin and his cowardice. The others, he didn’t care about. Except maybe Renee, but she was also another supporting piece to his thesis: she was more fucked up than most of them, almost just as him.

Betsy’s eyes shone a bit at his words and she tapped the pen against the page once. "And where would you place yourself, on this scale?"

Andrew laughed, because his drugs forced him too, but he wasn’t amused. He appreciated Dobson’s guts, but it wasn’t a funny question. The answer was even less funny. 

"Oh, Bee, I’m outside of the scale by now, and not to the weird side."

Dobson scribbled something, but when she looked up she tiled her head to a side a bit. “Bee?"

 _A stupid bee slamming against the window again and again and again, because she’s too stupid to see the wall of glass._ "Bees are stupid,” he settled for. It was true anyway. "They work their asses off ceaselessly for a big fat boss who only spills out babies morning to evening, and most of the time it’s only for bigger fatter humans to come by and steal their honey. They end up with nothing and yet they go back to work immediately after."

Bee didn’t look offended. She never did, Andrew noticed. It was another weird thing about her, adding to the long list.

"An interesting opinion,—” she said. He almost laughed in her face, “—and a strong one at that. Do you like bees, Andrew?"

Andrew stared at her wondering if she realized how stupid she sounded. Then he decided she probably didn’t care. "Better than foxes."

 

 

When Andrew came by the next time, there was a new little statue on Bee’s desk. A colorful bee made of pastel glass and with tiny shiny glitters on its wings, serene with its stylized smile and fat striped body. He stared at her and she smiled.

“Did you know—,” she said, “—that Einstein predicted that from the moment bees die, humanity will only have four years left to live?”

Andrew clicked his tongue. 

He sat down.

 

 

They talked about cars once, and Andrew knew Bee knew about Tilda but wouldn’t push him to talk about her.

“I never let Aaron drive my car,” he offered instead.

“Is he a bad driver?” Bee smiled, because she always did.

Andrew thought about it. “He’s too stupid. He always takes the wrong turns, no matter how many times he sees they're not the ones he should go for.”

This time, he knew as he watched Bee scribble, what she took from his words. Driving, as if.

“Do you think he shouldn’t be allowed to drive?” she asked and Andrew thought about track marks and big pupils and purple bruises.

“I think he’s better off with me behind the wheel,” he says.

 

 

Andrew told Bee about being seven and raped, next.

He watched her, still and unmovable; expression calm and void of any judgement, her posture open like a drain for him to puke his thoughts down of. His hands trembled and the grip of his drugs loosened a bit under the sheer burst of adrenaline that ran through his vein.

He’s never told anyone, before. Never. Luther, he told about Drake but not the others.

_And look how that turned out._

_Shut up, Andrew!_

“Andrew?”

_Say "please”._

“Do you need to take a break? We can stop for a bit, if you prefer.”

_Shut. Up. Dammit._

“Chocolate?” he asked, and he had a cup in his hands before the flashes in his mind were done assaulting him.

Bee sat just like before. The confession hung in the air like a suffocating mist, but she stood against it as if trying to dissipate it by her sheer willpower alone, by just pretending to be stronger than the ugliness in it.

Spoiler alert; it didn’t fucking work like that.

The next time she opened her mouth, her words were not what Andrew had expected. “Do you resent Nicky, for not responding to his attackers?”

Andrew saw what she was doing. It was easy, really. Projecting himself on Nicky was easy in Betsy’s room; harder outside, where his cousin’s endless chattering munched away at the wall of indifference and obstinate silence he put up around himself.

“No.” He didn’t resent Nicky; maybe only the fact that he’d already moved past what his parents did to him, maybe the fact that he still wanted their forgiveness like a kicked dog whining at his master’s feet. Maybe just the fact that Andrew couldn’t understand his goddamn ability to trust the whole fucking world no matter how many times it fucked him over.

Bee stared, and let him pull his legs up in front of his chest, defensive, even if his shoes dirtied the couch.

They waited in silence until the alarm rang the end of the session.

 

 

Roland had been Andrew’s little experiment, rather than a partner. No strings attached, no feelings making him a danger to Andrew’s already frail trust in humanity. The bartender was no more than a piece of flesh for Andrew to experiment with, and at the same time he was a colleague that had been decent enough to ask him out and accept “no” as an answer.

Andrew talked to Bee about him, mainly because hadn’t had anyone else to talk with. Nicky would have been far too enthusiastic, and Aaron would have been far too hostile. Renee was the only one to know, but he wouldn’t talk about the details with her.

“What do you want me to say, Andrew?” Bee’s voice was low, meek and unthreatening in front of his silent walls of wariness, and her hands around her mug were soft and firm. “It’s really a big step for you, I think you should be proud of it.”

That wasn’t what he had asked.

_Fag, fag, fag, Nicky!, fag, let him go!, fag, fag, you’re under arrest, kid, fag._

“Andrew, we are for a good part what our experiences shape us to be, but that depends greatly on how we interprete them. Is your past connected with your sexual orientation? Maybe. Or maybe not. Boys get exposed to a lot of heterosexual propaganda and still realize they are gay, so it can’t depend only on what we see and go through. I think that more than whether your past abuses influenced your orientation, we should focus more on how different a consensual relationship is from a non-consensual intercourse. The gender of the people involved comes in second, I believe.”

Roland was not a romantic interest in some novel a forty years old housewife with three kids could read in the airport lounge; but he was attractive, that much Andrew could say. And it had been bad, when he had first realized.

It had been so bad Andrew had locked himself in his room for days, coming out only for his shift and only because Nicky would freak out otherwise. So bad he had spent hours punching and kicking stuff and tossing in his bed growling at himself that he didn’t like it,  _didn’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t like it, I don’t—_

_~~please~~ _

Andrew wished he had had Bee back then. And then he laughed at the difference in attitude since he started seeing her.

“Andrew.” He looked up, and she was as serious as a thunderstorm waiting to pour down on Doomsday. “Being gay does not equal to consenting to what they did to you.”

 _I’m gay._  He had yet to say it so, out loud. Renee and Roland, he’d told in a quite roundabout way. He was no Nicky, and he still couldn’t stop wondering. 

“I don’t want to talk anymore.”

He laid his head on the backrest of the couch before she could add anything and he closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep because she was still there, but it was the closest to a display of trust he could offer at the moment.

With Roland, he never stuck around long enough to sleep together.

 

 

Bee prodded at Andrew’s past in a way that was too gentle for Andrew’s comfort. He was waiting for the “misunderstanding”, for the “liar”, for the “freak”; and to a certain degree, it pissed him off that he couldn’t foresee them.

When you see a punch coming, you harden the muscles and counter the attack. When you don’t see a punch coming, it breaks your nose and sends you sprawling on the bed,  _face down and mind foggy, arms too weak to support and brain too slow to think, pain all over his face-_

“Andrew, come back. You’re in my study at Palmetto and you’re safe here. Whatever you’re seeing, it’s in the past. It can’t touch you now.”

Andrew bit his tongue enough to taste blood, but refocused his gaze until he could see the yellow shade of Bee’s shirt, her upper body slightly hunched forward — enough to offer help, not enough to grab; enough to be lower than him, not enough to crowd on him —.

“I don’t need your help.” He didn’t. He’d gone his whole life without and he had made it out of that shit-hole that had been his childhood alone; he didn’t. need. anyone. People were only good at stabbing him in the back.

“Of course not, Andrew.” Bee shook her head, straightening up but pushing his mug closer, as if in her place. “You could do without my help, and we both know it. You don’t need it, but I can still try to make it better. Consider it a commodity, if you want. A way to make it hurt less.”

Andrew remembered a psychotherapist back when he was younger, thirteen or something in Cass’ hands, and the man had told him he wanted to help  _fix_  him.

He had a feeling Betsy would never use that word.

“I promised Aaron my help,—” he hushed, “—and he thought I was talking just for the sake of it.”

“He didn’t believe you?”

“He didn’t believe I would go through with it.”

“I imagine it must have hurt you. I know you value your promises, Andrew. Would you want him to apologize for that?”

Sometimes, Andrew couldn’t see where Bee was trying to go. Sometimes, he wanted to, and others he just wanted her to shut up. He had a feeling if he would say so, she’d keep quiet. “I don’t believe in regret and revenge, Bee. Those are for the weak who didn’t have the guts to act before or lose them after the act.” He frowned. “People should just make a choice and stick with it.”

“Like foster parents?”

“Ouch.” The drugs were buzzing in Andrew’s brain and he knew he was smiling that crazy smile of his, he could feel his mouth corners lift. Bee smiled apologetically but didn’t take her question back. “I would have never spent one second longer in those families, Bee, and you very well know that.”

They had talked about the others after Steven, after Jesse, after everybody, all the way to Drake. In the meanwhile, Kevin had demanded Andrew’s talent like he’d give a shit about it. A past-time, that would work as, he had told Bee. And then Andrew had taken Matt to Columbia. Bee hadn’t been happy about it, but she had left her disappointment outside the door of the counseling room, as promised.

Andrew didn’t believe in regret and revenge, but neither he believe in forgiveness. It was weird to be granted just that.

Bee had nodded to him, and now was scribbling. On the bottom of her pencil stood a plastic cap in the shape of a bee. She’d been buying many things in that theme. Andrew knew it was her way to keep a connection with him.

“What would you want from Aaron, then?” she asked instead, tilting her head to a side a bit.

_A fucking thank you._

_His end of the deal._

_Look me in the eyes, I’m your brother, you were the one who came for me, now fucking look at me._

_I chose you over Cass, why can’t you choose me over Tilda?!_

“Oh, Bee, you got it wrong.” He smiled, chugging down bitterness like a mix of whiskey and snot and tears. “I want  _nothing_.”

 

 

Andrew bursted in Bee’s room like a tornado in Oklahoma with four words on his lips before the door had even closed: “Can you psychoanalyze coach?”

Bee didn’t even blink, too used to his antics by now. Andrew would normally find it amusing if he didn’t feel absolutely furious. “Why would I do that?”

“Because he’s out of his fucking mind.” Andrew let himself fall sitting on the couch, arms crossed in annoyance and ignoring the gentle rebuttal at his language. “The runaway is trouble, Bee. He’s hiding something, and it’s something big.”

Andrew ignored the rest of the sitting, Bee telling him she had yet to meet Neil and she had no idea about him. Andrew knew she wouldn’t talk about him anyway so there was no point in pursuing the argument.

“Mark my word, Bee,—” Josten had fake brown eyes burning with true flames, but Andrew had no intention of getting burned, “—he is trouble.”

 

 

Josten was more than trouble.

Josten was a fucking menace with a target the size of Texas on his back and the obliviousness of a six years old mixed with the stubbornness of a mule.

Andrew hated him.

 

 

“You seem to agree to a lot of things Neil asks you to do.”

Andrew frowned and crossed his arms. “You too, Bee? Did Nicky get you on my case?”

“You know it’s not like that,” she smiled gently, offering hot chocolate like an hug. “But I wonder if you realize how much you mention him.”

He had a vague idea. Eidetic memory fucking sucked when he was trying to push that pretty annoying face out of his goddamn mind. His nightmares already had far enough material to work with even without taking from his libido.

“Nothing’s going to come out of that.”  _Nothing, nothing, nothing, I want nothing, I’ll give him nothing._  “He’ll be soon gone.”

_I want nothing._

_Shut up, Andrew._

 

 

Neil didn’t go, but Drake came back and Bee was no saving grace or warm hug, but Andrew saw her walking through the threshold of his room and he didn’t feel mad.

 

 

They were traveling down the road, Nicky’s pleading sorry’s deep in Andrew’s skull and the feeling of Neil’s scars on his fingertips like ghostly prints.

“I need to know…” Bee drove like a normal person, which is to mean too slowly for Andrew’s liking, especially now, with the phantom of Drake chasing after them, running, running and laughing,  _lounging at him with a bottle in his hand, did you miss me, AJ?, shut up, be a good boy, let’s have fun like the old times, AJ, AJ, AJ,_  “Nicky and Neil are the ones who talked you into going to Columbia. How do you feel toward them?"

Andrew frowned. He was pretty sure there was a reason for the question, but he couldn’t find it until he started answering.

“I’m not mad at Nicky, if that’s what you want to know.” Oh. “It’s not his fault he’s helpless.”

_It’s not his fault, it’s not his fault, it’s not his fault-_

“No,-” Bee agrees gently, taking a turn with her eyes on the street and her heart on her sleeve, “-it’s not his fault.”

_It’s not your fault._

_SHUT. UP._

“It’s never anybody’s fault,” Andrew stated, and it was a bitter stater fact that it was just how it was, right? Never a charge, never a trial. There’s no killer if they didn’t find the corpse. 

His drugs made him burst out laughing and he hated them.

Bee stole a glance at him from the corner of her eyes. “What about Neil, instead?”

Andrew blinked. The road in front of the car got swallowed mile after mile and he played, like the child he never were, to imagine a shadow man jumping from sign to sign to keep up with them.

_You should run faster, AJ, if you really don’t want me to catch up with you._

He felt the need to rip the wheel from Bee’s hands but he couldn’t decide if he wanted to turn it, the way he did with Tilda, to get them both in the path of another vehicle, or if he just wanted to press down on the pedal until they were so fast no shadow could touch them anymore.

He said: “Neil owes me."

 

 

Bee helped him settle his things in his room and the way she placed them, allowing her OCD to take over just a bit in the toiletries places side by side in size order and his clothes divided by color — which meant grey with grey and black with black —, was oddly familiar, though not enough to be comforting.

He watched sitting cross-legged on the chair. The bed, he ignored it. The ache in his lower back dulled by pain-killers, he had no intention of placing himself in unknown sheets anytime soon.

Bee looked at him when she was done, the presence of the other doctors at her back like ominous shadows in the too-bright corridor. “Neil can drive the car, Andrew. And we know he’ll never keep his mouth shut when people will badmouth him. He’s no coward.”

“No,-” Andrew agreed, his eyes flying to the faceless shapes behind her only for a second, “-but he’s a fucking moron.”

 

 

Without his drugs, Andrew didn’t feel like laughing. Not even when merciless hands on his sides forced him to.

 

 

Andrew cried.

 

 

Bee didn’t come to get him. Nicky and Kevin and a black and blue Neil did.

Andrew really had no time to deal with that.

 

 

Bee looked horrified, for maybe the first time since he’d met her. Maybe because she’d been the one to recommend Eastheaven, maybe because she could not phantom someone in her own field willing to break their vows in such an animalistic way. Maybe because she cared both for him and for Neil.

Andrew did not care.

“I told you, Bee,” he said. “He’s a moron.”

 

 

Andrew had learnt in time, not to heal fast, but to suck it up and move on. He did so, even though Neil seemed unable to.

Neil was clingy, in a way that wasn’t annoying as much as it was frustrating because no matter what he did, no matter who pointed stuff out for him, Neil never got the hint.

Andrew plopped down on Bee’s couch and glared at her. “Is this what sexual frustration feels like?”

Bee smiled gently. “Don’t you always say that Neil needs everything spoken out for him? Maybe you should be more direct with this matter, too.”

It wouldn’t work, Andrew knew that much already. Because Neil was on the run, had been for most of his life, and was not going to stay. 

He was another pretty thing, displayed in a showcase, that Andrew could never afford.

 

 

“I hate you. It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t blow you.”

Neil’s shock was almost amusing enough to dull the stab of want. It was not even a mere sexual desire. Andrew wanted all. Wanted Neil’s sassy mouth to call him out and to fight for him, he wanted those auburn air through his fingertips and those blue eyes on him even if that meant he had to actually put effort in fucking Exy to get them to shine with mischief and excitement. He wanted the moment he’d look at Neil and the moron would say “I have no more truths to give because I gave them all to you”.

Andrew called Bee in the middle of the night.

“I hate him so fucking much.”

“ _I know, Andrew. I am proud of you for coming clear with him, for all that matters._ ”

“It matters shit.”

“ _I’m sorry to hear that._ ”

_Me too, Bee._

 

 

The first session after the first time he kissed Neil, Andrew looked at Bee and sat down slowly, not sure what to say. 

Frowning, he thought; and she let him while handling him a cup of hot cocoa. There was much to say and to elaborate for him, but in the end, he looked up to her and said: “He stopped when I told him to.”

Bee didn’t say anything, but her smile was a blinding reassurance.

 

 

Since when they met, they both got more scars, more nightmares and more happiness that they’d expect to. Neil saw his father’s death and exchanged his life for a mere amount of money; and Andrew traded his brother’s promise for Neil’s presence and broke Riko’s arm on national television.

He called Bee after the match. 

He said: “I don’t regret it.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, uhm, I started writing this after an intense course of simulations of psychoanalysis. I cannot say I agree with all the orientations and beliefs of the discipline, but I appreciated the exercise in getting close to the patient and I hope I managed to slip some of what I learnt in ^^”
> 
> Andrew is so hard to write, he’s such a complex character, damn, I hope I didn’t just throw him into the depths of OOC-ness ^^”
> 
> Find me at Tumblr? @agapantoblu.tumblr.com


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